Alternative rock icon and winner of Album of the Year for Morning Phase, Beck confirmed in a post-awards interview that he wasn’t offended by Kanye West’s comments made following the Grammys, in which the rapper advised Beck to “respect artistry, and [that] he should have given his award to Beyoncé.”

Though Beck did not take to heart West faking the audience, nearly repeating his interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance of her award for Best Female Video category for “You Belong With Me” at the 2009 VMAs, this occurrence did bring to light the fact that the Recording Academy failed to present a single rap award during the live telecast of the 57th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 8.

“I think [West] has a point,” said Bill Ellis, associate professor of music at St. Michael’s College, “though his way of handling it became more about him than the issue he was addressing. Namely, the habitual refusal to award the night’s highest honors to rap artists, which ties into the conservative, older nature of Grammy voters who typically relegate the cutting-edge, innovative achievements of hip-hop to the rap categories.”

Besides Lauryn Hill, an American singer-songwriter, rapper and producer who won Album of the Year in 1998 followed by OutKast in 2003, the number of rap artists winning the award “has been high and dry since,” said Ellis, a voting member in the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences for nearly two decades.

Ellis recalled that while it is likely that Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran split the sensitive singer-songwriter vote, and Beyoncé and Pharrell likely split the urban music vote, Beck seemed to have won by default.

“Grammy members may have felt it was time to recognize Beck in a more prominent category,” Ellis said “despite [his] having won two Best Alternative Performance awards for his 2011 album, ‘Mutations’ and 1997’s ‘Odelay,’ and Best Rock Vocal Performance for his 1997 album, ‘Where Its At.’”

Though it wouldn’t be the first time Grammy voters honored an act more for the “arc of a career than a particular album,” Ellis said, mentioning Steely Dan “who had never won a Grammy until 2000 when they picked up Album of the Year for ‘Two Against Nature.’ Again, it was hardly the band’s finest hour, but the vote seemed to right a wrong by Grammy voters, who overlooked Steely Dan’s classic albums of the 1970s.”

Lastly, “there could also be a studio sensibility in play given the many engineers and producers who are Grammy voters, one that awards the sound of an album,” Ellis said, as much as the music and the sheen of Beck’s latest album is a rewarding experience in and of itself.

Ellis had his students in his first-year seminar class, Music and the Human Experience, vote for Album of the Year. Sam Smith won “by a landslide,” Ellis said. Smith took home four accolades during the telecast. Of the 14 students that voted, Beck received one. Ellis went with Pharrell’s 2014 album “Girl.”

Though West may have made it seem like the Recording Academy disregards African American artists, it’s not like he needed another award in his household, having won 21 himself, more than his current collaborator Paul McCartney, and more than Beyoncé, though they’ve all been in the rap field.

According to Ellis, the Grammys have historically awarded numerous top honors to African American artists like Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Whitney Houston, to name a few. But, the organization continues to seem perplexed by rap.

“If the Grammys don’t wish to remain out of touch to the public at large and to those who most consume music,” Ellis said, “they will make a better effort to award rap recordings in mainstream categories when warranted, which is much of the time.”